Explanation:
This premier gamma-ray view of the sky was produced by
the COMPTEL instrument
onboard NASA's orbiting
Compton Gamma Ray Observatory.
The entire sky is seen projected on a coordinate system
centered on our Milky Way Galaxy with the
plane of the Galaxy
running across the middle of the picture.
Gamma-ray intensity is represented by a false color map -
low (blue) to high (white).
COMPTEL's sensitivity to gamma-rays which have
over 1 million times the energy of visible light photons
reveals the locations of some of the Galaxy's most exotic objects.
The brightest source, the Crab pulsar,
is located near the plane of the Galaxy on the far right.
Moving along the plane from the Crab, more than halfway toward
the galactic center, another bright gamma-ray source,
the Vela pulsar, appears.
The galactic center itself, along with the
famous black hole candidate Cygnus X-1 (near the plane, halfway from the
center to the left edge) are also seen as bright sources.
Both above and below the plane, spots of gamma-ray emission due to
distant active galaxies are also visible.